Usually when I see writing competitions, I instantly know what I will write about, but when I saw this one I had to think deeply. I remember I was at school and I was furious because some kids were making fun of me as a joke. I went into the counselor's office and I saw a girl talking about the thoughts she's been having and how no one ever takes her seriously when she talks about this particular subject. I knocked on the door and asked if I could come in. I instantly got into the subject and told her I’ve been through this before and it took me a long time to find hope of getting help. I was asking her if she had a good support system and she said, “I only have a few; a lot of my friends are fake because they keep saying they can’t deal with my scrambled emotions.” I was surprised by what she said because I felt like this too at one point of my life and I say, “you don’t need a large support system to deal with your emotions.” The coping skills I found extremely helpful that I found myself using were square breathing, deep breathing, physical grounding, mental grounding, finding your happy space, journaling, and talking to your support system. And that's why I feel like we need to talk about our feelings because there will always be negative thoughts that can harm us or the world. 

I was in my 8th period class called “academic competitions” and this guy was so mad. He came up to me sat down and said “I hate my 9th period” I said why he said “she called me stupid for doing what I enjoy doing.” In the moment I got so mad because there is nothing that would make a teacher say your stupid acceptable. I told him to tell her how they feel and they were like “ thank you for actually listening to me” and that's when I knew I made a difference.